


No Man is an Island in the Stream.

by duckgirlie



Category: Pundit RPF (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-20
Updated: 2010-04-20
Packaged: 2017-10-17 18:50:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duckgirlie/pseuds/duckgirlie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris might be in love. Ana does not want SXSW ruined with any whining. Also, there is drinking and kareoke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Man is an Island in the Stream.

**Author's Note:**

> So, first there were [these](http://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/10249905246) [tweets](http://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/10252181236). Then there were [these](http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinqued/4459355784/in/faves-48758308@N08/) [pictures](http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinqued/4459355712/in/faves-48758308@N08/). I WAS POWERLESS. (For the purposes of this fic, Chris’s wife does not exist. Actually, she may well exist (I’m sure Obama needs her) but she exists in an entirely not-Chris’s-wife context.) (May also contain minor Ezra/Charts, but that’s _totally canon_ )  
> And thanks to [](http://ceilidh-ann.livejournal.com/profile)[**ceilidh_ann**](http://ceilidh-ann.livejournal.com/) for re-assuring me I'm not the only one who wants to read about them.

  


Ana had been waiting outside the airport for half an hour when Chris finally emerged. Though it took her about five minutes to pick him out of the crowd, because his head was bowed over his blackberry as he slowly proceeded across the arrivals hall.

“Are you going to be this pathetic the whole time? Because my time is in high demand down here, I can easily find another mousey political journalist to follow me around.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just…” He waved his hand around non-committedly before trying to talk again. She cut him off.

“Just butch it up, Hayes. I don’t want any of your navel-gazing this trip. Don’t make me cut you.”

Chris threw his hands up in defeat. “I bow to your endless might.”

“Good.”

Ana Marie turned sharply and strode towards the row of cabs, leaving Chris to grab his bag and hurry after her.

  


*****

  
“Remind me again why we’re sharing a room?”

Ana Marie flopped down on the bed by the window before answering. “Because print journalism is a dying medium–”

“I thought we’d agreed to stop saying that out loud.”

“–Because print journalism is a dying medium, and therefor people with our considerable talents are under-appreciated. So we could either get two rooms in the ass-end of town and take forever to get anywhere, or we could share and stay somewhere close to the action.”

“And it’s not just because Chris wanted someone to keep an eye on you so there aren’t anymore ‘incidents’?”

“I’m not going to lie to you, so I can neither confirm nor deny these accusations.”

Chris flopped down on his own bed and sighed deeply.

“Don’t worry.” Ana reassured him. “If you score, I will totally sleep in the hallway.”

He couldn’t hold in the bitter laugh. “I don’t think…”

She cut him off again. “I believe I was _very specific_ about your navel-gazing.”

“Fine.”

Ana pulled herself to sitting and patted him gently on the shoulder. “But I get far more lenient about that sort of thing after midnight.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Ready to head out?”

“Let me grab a shower first.”

  


*****

  
Later that day, they were sitting at the back of a large conference room for a panel Ana was very excited about, though Chris wasn’t entirely sure what was being discussed. During a pause when the speakers changed and mics were re-adjusted she leaned over to poke him in the ribs and whisper in his ear.

“You know the point of coming here instead of staying in DC was to experience this through a medium _other_ then Twitter, right?”

He looked up and thrust his blackberry at her. “Have you seen this?”

 _Wish there was a way of filtering out a particular hashtag. #tiredofsxsw_

 _posted by ezraklein at 6.09 PM Mar 14th_

She rolled her eyes. “I’m confiscating this–” she grabbed his phone, “–until you stop being lame.”

Chris made an aborted attempt to re-claim the phone, but it was already thrust deep into Ana Marie’s purse.

“I need that for important work-related things.”

She slapped his hand away from the bag. “Then you’ll just have to stop being lame.”

Chris crossed his arms huffily and returned his attention to the panel.

  


*****

  
Ana finally gave him his phone back when they were grabbing dinner that evening.

“What do you think it means?”

“What does what mean?”

“The tweet.”

“Are we still talking about that?”

Chris was starting to get the ‘no more laughing’ look, so Ana relented. “I have no idea what it means, Chris. It probably means his twitter feed is full of people talking about Southwest and he’s sick of it. I’d probably be annoyed too, if I wasn’t here.”

“So you don’t think it’s my…”

“Oh my _god_.” Ana thumped her head back against the wall, effectively ending that stream of conversation.

“And by the way,” she started talking again, “I signed us up for karaoke tomorrow night.”

  


*****

  
Ana hadn’t been kidding. Which is why, the following night, Chris found himself sitting in a bar with two shots in front of him.

“What are we singing, anyway?”

She stood up to get more salt from the bar and grinned “Islands in the Stream.”

“Want to get your Dolly on?”

“Who says I’m being Dolly?”

Ana grinned again and slapped the table. By the time she got back with the salt, Chris already had his blackberry out.

She gestured at his phone. “Put that away and drink your tequila.”

“Relax. I’m posting, not reading.” He flashed the screen at her for approval before picking a shot up to clink against hers.

“Glad to see you’ve finally gotten with the program.”

They necked back their two shots each before heading towards the stage.

Ana hadn’t been kidding about which part he was going to sing, jumping on the Kenny lines before Chris was entirely aware what was going on, leaving him to join in for the Dolly parts or else be stuck on stage doing nothing. The second the song was over he was off stage and back at the bar, demanding another drink.

Ana appeared suddenly behind him. “You did good, Lambchop.”

“I hate you.”

“You’ll get over it.” She grabbed their beers and hustled him over to a table to watch the rest of the performances.

“Don’t look now,” she whispered, “but that guy near the front was totally checking you out.”

“Ana…”

“It’s probably mostly to do with your winning personality, but you know what Southerners are like about Dolly, so that probably helped.”

“Ana, I _told_ you.”

“No you didn’t. You’ve just been moping. And I know he’s so cute and adorable and brilliant and perfect and ohmygod only twenty-five. But none of these things actually explain anything.”

Chris pressed his forehead into the table. “I have had nowhere near enough alcohol to talk about this right now.”

“Then wait here.”

  


*****

  
Their table was covered in empty bottles and discarded glasses.

“So you kissed him.”

“No.”

“He kissed you?”

“No.”

“You kissed each other?”

“No. Sort of. Yes.”

Ana leaned back in the booth and waited for an explanation.

“There was this… thing, on. Everyone was there, almost. I was stuck in a ridiculous conversation with Laura Ingraham for about half an hour, and I’d just been grabbing glasses of wine off every tray that came anywhere near us, so by the time I’d managed to free myself I was starting to… wobble, a little bit.”

“Completely forgivable.”

 _Chris was trying to cross the room without calling attention to how unsteady he was feeling when his legs started to rebel. He’d nearly tripped three times when someone caught him under the arm and steadied his movements._

 _“I think you could do with some air.” Ezra offered._

 _“That’s probably true.”_

 _Except once they stepped outside and the cold air hit him, Chris’s legs buckled beneath him and he nearly dragged Ezra to the ground with him._

 _“Whoa there… Are you okay?”_

 _“I’m fine. I think.” Chris paused to think for a second. “I didn’t have any dinner. And I’m pretty sure I just drank a bottle of wine in about twenty minutes.”_

 _“So I noticed. Though I can hardly blame you.”_

 _Chris looked up and realised he was still clutching Ezra’s arm for balance, despite having steadied himself. He loosened his grip, but the other man didn’t withdraw his arm._

 _“Sorry about this.”_

 _“Not a problem. It hasn’t been that long since I was dragging people home from keg parties. You haven’t thrown up on my shoes yet, so that puts you ahead of most of UCLA.”_

 _Chris stiffened slightly at the reminder of exactly how recently Ezra had been in college. He leaned back against the wall and looked around to figure out exactly where he was._

 _“Are we in an alleyway?”_

 _“I got one of the busboys to let me out, told them you were ill. I didn’t think it would look great for the Nation to have their Washington editor inebriated and escorted through the lobby by a representative from a rival publication.”_

 _“Oh. Okay. Thanks for protecting my professional dignity.”_

 _Ezra slid down the wall next to him and leaned into his side, tilted slightly to maintain eye contact and smiled softly._

 _“Well, that, and the floor in the lobby is pretty slippy. I didn’t want you to fall and hurt yourself.”_

 _He stroked his knuckles gently across Chris’s knee as he spoke. Chris cleared his throat and almost involuntarily leaned into Ezra’s space._

 _“I don’t think I can stand up just yet.”_

 _“Probably not. I’m not sure I want to stand up, and I’ve only had three glasses.”_

 _“Do I look really drunk.”_

 _Ezra leaned back very slightly with a critical look before leaning in again. “You’re not so bad. If it wasn’t for your lips, I probably wouldn’t notice all that fast.”_

 _“What’s wrong with my lips?” Chris hand went up to check, but he couldn’t notice a difference._

 _Ezra laughed slightly. “You know, when you’ve been drinking not-great red wine and the tiny bits of sediment get stuck in the lines on your lips? It dyes them kind of purple.”_

 _He pulled his iPhone out of his pocket to show Chris his reflection, and reached forward to drag Chris’s lower lip down slightly for a better look._

 _“Oh.”_

 _“Yeah.” Ezra re-pocketed his phone and looked back at Chris, who was looking at his lips slightly intently._

 _He didn’t even flinch when Chris reached out to trace along the line of his lips._

 _“You don’t have it.”_

 _“Well. My lips are magic.”_

 _“Yeah…”_

 _Chris isn’t sure how it happened but in the next fifteen seconds he goes from sitting back and staring at Ezra’s lips to leaning forward with his own lips pressed against them._

 _His hands are clutching at Ezra’s shirt as he tries to pull him closer, and Ezra’s hands are resting on his shoulders as his thumbs gently stroke against Chris’s neck. He’s not sure how long they stay like that, but his hand ends up carding through Ezra’s hair and pulling him even closer until he breaks away to take a few gasping breaths._

 _Unfortunately, in that moment Ezra, with his mussed-up hair, wrinkled shirt and loosened tie strikes Chris as looking even younger then he is, and Chris slightly freaks out._

 _He jumped to his feet, awkwardly straightening his clothes and hair and dashed out of the alleyway, mumbling apologies. It takes Ezra a few seconds to catch up, but he followed him out onto the street, where Chris was trying to hail a cab._

 _“I’m sorry, okay? I was just… Nevermind, I’m sorry. Don’t think… Just don’t, okay?”_

 _A cab pulled up and Chris practically threw himself into it. Ezra ran up and hammered on the windown to try and get him to roll it down, but Chris just stared steadily ahead as the cab pulls away from the sidewalk._

Ana stared at him. “I’m really not seeing a problem here.”

“What?”

“Well, aside from you abandoning him mid-make-out. Which is kind of douchey. But aside from that, what’s the big deal?”

“I… Look, I obviously took advantage of him, okay? He was just trying to help me and then I just… throw myself at him? He probably freaked out and…”

“Dude. No one says ‘my lips are magic’ unless they _really_ want you to investigate for yourself.”

“You’re really not helping.”

“You’re an idiot.”

Chris grabbed another shot off the table and knocked it back before checking what it was. The second the sambuca hit his tongue he nearly gagged and started coughing until Ana started hammering his back.

“Dude. Get a grip.”

“Leave me alone.”

“You know, for someone worried that the person they’re into is too young for them, you’re sure _acting_ like you’re thirty-one.”

“Shut up.”

She just laughed again and motioned for another round of beer. The drank in silence for a few minutes, and Chris fiddled with his phone until the bottle was half-finished and he turned to her.

“So you don’t think I’ve inescapably fucked up?”

“Awww…” She wrapped an arm around his shoulders and squeezed him tightly. “Of course not. Though everything could change if you even think about drunk-dialling him.”  
“Probably.” He knocked back the rest of his drink and looked over at the bar. “One more.”

She peered critically at him for a second before agreeing. “Just the one.”

  


*****

  
Chris woke up the next morning feeling like everyone in the entire world was kicking him gently in the head.

“I hate you, Ana Marie Cox. I hate you so much.”

“That’s crazy talk, Christopher Hayes. You love me.”

“Last night never happened, alright?”

“If you say so.”

Ana cackled gleefully from the other bed and tossed him an orange. “You need some vitamin C. Eat that, and I’ll bring you some coffee.”

He tried to break through the skin for about a minute before giving up and throwing it back at her with slightly more force then was strictly necessary.

“Calm yourself.”

“Where’s my phone?”

“I have no idea. You got really angry with it last night and took the battery out and hid the rest.”

“What?” Chris jerked himself upright and nearly fell off the bed. “I hid it in the room, right?”

“Probably. Every time I left you alone, you were calling someone. I tried to take your phone off you, but you kept hitting me. When we finally got back here, I was taking my make-up off when you had a bit of a fit, so unless you threw it out the window, it’s probably in here somewhere.”

He paled slightly. “Do you know who I was calling?”

“Well, I can’t be certain, but based on the topic of conversation…”

“Shit.”

She flopped down on the bed next to him. “If it’s any consolation, I could barely understand what you were saying, so I doubt you were intelligible at the other end of a phone line.”

“It’s really not.”

“You’ll be fine.” Ana jumped to her feet and headed to the door. “I’ll go get us some coffee. You, find and re-assemble your phone. Everything will be fine.”

Once she’d disappeared, Chris rolled off the bed and managed to find all the parts of his phone. After re-assembly, he left it on the comforter for a few minutes before finally biting the bullet and turning it on.

It started beeping almost immediately to alert him to all his missed calls, but he flipped through to the ‘recently called’ list, even if it was just to confirm what he already knew.

 _Outgoing calls: Ezra Klein: 12.13. 12.32. 1.04. 1.12. 1.40. 2.01. 2.19_

 _Shit_.

Flipping back to the missed calls menu, his heart sank further.

 _Missed incoming calls: Ezra Klein: 12.17. 12.38. 1.06. 1.13_

 _Shit_

The icon for his voicemail was blinking at him judgementally, but it still took him five minutes before he picked this phone up to check his messages.

“Hey, Chris. Sorry I missed your call, I left my phone in my kitchen… I’m really glad you called though, so… call me back? Thanks. Oh, this is Ezra. Obviously. Sorry.”

“Chris? Sorry, I didn’t think you’d call back immediately, so I left my phone back in my kitchen. I couldn’t really understand your voicemail though, so I think there’s interference on the line. It’s late, so I’ll talk to you soon, okay? Bye.”

“Okay, I picked my phone up as soon as it rang, but you cut me off. And I know you have your phone on you, so why aren’t you answering? What’s going on?”

“What the fuck, Chris? If you want to talk, _stay on the line_. I thought you were supposed to be the mature one? I’m putting my phone on silent, so you can stop, okay? Call me when you’re feeling like a grown-up.”

When the last message rang off, Chris flopped down on the bed and groaned.

“Fuuuuck.”

Ana Marie must have been waiting outside, because she burst through the door at exactly that moment, handing Chris a giant coffee and crawling into bed next to him.

“It’ll be okay.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’ll see.”

  


*****

  
Chris finally agreed to leave their room for a late-afternoon panel and an early dinner, though he insisted on keeping his sunglasses on, even as the sky drew darker.

They were eating on a patio, avoiding any alcohol whatsoever when Ana leaned back in her seat.

“So.” She looked at him. “What’s your plan?”

“Plan for what?”

“This whole oblivious thing? Not happening, Hayes. Answer the question.”

“I have no idea.” He sighed. “Grovelling? I can forsee an awful lot of grovelling in my near future.”

“Hmm.”

“I doubt it’ll do any good though. You heard the voicemail.”

She waved his concerns off. “That’s totally explain-away-able.”

“Seven hang-ups is easily explainable?”

“Sure. Just tell him you pocket-dialled him or something.”

“Won’t that sound pathetic and incredibly fake?”

“So I’ll tell him.”

“’Cause that won’t sound worse.”

“You’re doubting my skills again.”

“Even you can’t pull off the whole middle-school will-you-kiss-my-friend thing.”

“Ye of little faith. What time is it in DC?”

Chris checked his watch. “About half-nine.”

“Perfect.” Ana pulled her phone out and started dialling. Chris lunged for her phone but she managed to trap both his hands against the table-top without dropping her phone and grinned at him as the call connected.

“Hi, Ezra? It’s Ana Marie Cox, sorry if it’s a bit late, but I had something I wanted to ask you… Yeah, there’s a panel I was thinking of going to tomorrow, with Michael… Michael Elpre-something…. Yeah, that’s him. And I remembered you had very strong opinions about him, but I couldn’t remember whether they were positive or negative… Really? Wow, I’ll be sure to avoid that then… Austin’s great… Oh, you saw those? I still maintain that photo could be anyone… Yeah, poor Chris forgot to lock his keypad and wasted all his minutes pocket dialling half his phonebook… A few days longer… Thanks for that. See you around.”

She clicked her phone off and released Chris from the table top.

“There.”

He glared at her. “Firstly, I left him at least two voicemails. Secondly, Ezra is pretty much definitively _not an idiot_ , so he’s going to know that was entirely not true.”

“Look. Either he thinks you drunk dialled him and ignored him, and are continuing to ignore him, which makes you an asshole, or he thinks you drunk dialled him, but that you know it was stupid and are completely embarrassed about it.”

“And how does that help?”

“You’d be amazed at the forgiveness powers of amused pity.”

“That’s what we’re going for? Amused pity?”

“When you see him you can apologise properly. But this way, you don’t have to do it over the phone, and he won’t be stewing in resentment until you can speak to him in person.”

She leaned back in her chair with a look of intense self-satisfaction.

“You’re either a genius, or insane.”

Ana shrugged. “I’ll take either one.”

  


*****

  
Despite Ana’s assurances, by the time they were flying back to DC, Chris had managed to ball himself up into an even more nervous wreck. By the time their plane was half-way there, Ana was pretty close to smacking him upside the head just to get him to stop fidgeting.

“I swear to _god_ Chris. If you don’t calm down, I will end you.”

“This is all your fault.”

“ _My fault_? How exactly is you freaking out about something that is entirely of your own doing my fault?”

Chris just grunted and started fiddling with his seat belt.

“Not to mention the fact that I spent at least half of my fun-trip-to-Southwest listening to you and your repeated whining about all sorts of things that are entirely irrelevant to my life, and would be irrelevant to yours if you weren’t over-thinking everything to the nth degree.”

“Sorry.” He stopped fiddling and laid his hands flat on the armrests before looking over at her. “So you _really_ don’t think he’s too yo…”

“Chris, _I swear to god_ I will punch you if you ask me that again.”

“Right. Sorry.” He stared out the window and bit his lip.

She sighed and patted him on the hand. “You’ll be fine.”

  


*****

  
In front of the airport, Chris turned to say goodbye, but Ana fixed him with a stern look.

“If you think I’m letting you go off alone, to talk yourself back into a gigantic panic, you haven’t learned very much from this trip have you?”

“What?”

“Get in the cab.”

She dragged him in next to her and prodded him expectantly when the driver asked for an address.

“I don’t know where we’re going.”

“Yes, you do.”

He swallowed his panic for what felt like the millionth time in the last week and gave the driver Ezra’s street.

“I can’t believe you’re dropping me off.”

“Please. Like you won’t go up one story and run out as soon as I’m gone. I’m waiting outside until you confirm you’ve at least spoken to him.”

“What the hell?”

“Us married ladies have to get our kicks somehow.”

“I’m going to have to send Chris a ‘congratulations on maintaining your sanity during your marriage’ card.”

“That’s the spirit. No more whining. It’s very unattractive.”

“I hate you.”

“So you keep saying.”

She patted him on the shoulder again, and the rode the rest of the way in silence.

  


*****

  
It was nearly ten pm, so the knock on his door took Ezra slightly by surprise.

He leaned against his door frame, leaving Chris standing awkwardly in the middle of the hallway.

“Can I help you?”

Chris stood for a second, searching for the right words, until Ezra sighed and scratched his temple.

“Look, Chris…”

“Wait…”

Chris dug into his pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper, smoothing it between his hands and holding it up in front of himself.

“I made a chart.”

A tiny smile ghosted at the corner of Ezra’s mouth.

“What does it show?”

The chart showed a Venn diagram where one circle was contained entirely within the other. Only a tiny amount of the larger circle wasn’t overlap. A few indecipherable sentences were scrawled at the bottom of the sheet. Chris’s eyes flicked back-and-forth between the sheet and Ezra’s face as he explained.

“This circle” –the slightly bigger one– “is times when I’m not with you. And this one” –the smaller– “is times when I wish I was.”

Ezra reached out slightly to trace his finger along the tiny, un-overlapped area. “And this?”

Chris smiled bashfully for a second. “That’s when I have a huge deadline. Or you’re talking about hummus.”

“Ah.” Ezra slid his finger off the chart to slide gently against Chris’s shirt buttons. Hooking his finger into Chris’s shirt, he pulled him slowly into his apartment. “And what was your sample size?”

Chris stumbled slightly as he moved forward, still slightly apprehensive. “Just one.”

They came to a stop somewhere in the living room. “Not very scientific.”

“No.” Chris swallowed deeply before continuing, “but I’m confident all the results are replicable.”

“Remind me to check up on that.” Ezra fisted his hand in the front of Chris’s shirt and pulled him into an intense kiss.

A few minutes later, he pulled back and looked Chris in the eyes. “Ana Marie isn’t going to come looking for you, is she?”

Chris bit his lip. “I should probably text her.”

Ezra’s fingers slid to pop open Chris’s top two buttons and pulled him back down for another kiss. “Good idea.”


End file.
